The only thing I am learning from this thread is the difference between who is arrogant enough to objectify their own interpretations and who is wise enough to question their own interpretations. - Michael Corsetto [more]

I was thinking more along the lines of:
FTC Parity Representation
400 Team Championship

We are on pace to catch FRC either in 2013 or 2014 for number of teams in the program. In reality, we may already have more teams since they don't all the teams from: Russia, China, India, Austrailia, Romania, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan. Not sure if they list all the teams from Mexico and the Netherlands.

If we don't speak up now, we might get relegated to representation equal to FLL next championship. We got a 0% increase at the 2012 Championship after increasing the program by 25%! In contrast, FRC increased their program by 13% and got a 14+% increase at the Championship.

Sure, one of my organization's teams won FTC champs. Yet any game where the ingenuity of doing anything prior to endgame is totally nullified by the endgame itself is pretty disenfranchising. One of the bots at worlds deployed a friggin minibot when it had the magnet ball (an innovative answer to the hardest problem on the FTC field) -- only to be trumped by a 12' lift since it was so undervalued.

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New drive train design planned for August 1. Be ready to discuss!

^ Yep. End game became a lot bigger deal than anticipated by the GDC. I'm glad for it, but it does leave teams that concentrated on other ways to score lacking. This also happened last year where many matches were decided based on balancing and not scoring batons like the robots were actually designed for. If it's all based on driving like last year, it's no fun, but if it's all based on design like this year, rookie teams with smaller budgets are left in the dust. You've got to find a balance - Hot Shot had this.

p.s. The minibot team was recognized - they won the innovate award at worlds. But you're right, the points should be weighted more evenly.

We were talking about trying to make a flying robot earlier this year, we started making prototypes but it seemed like the gears would make it to heavy because we would need to gear up the motors like crazy. It would be more like a helicopter, and if we used the light weight plastic gears then I think it would have better luck.

Why not just buy a quadcopter. Maybe this is some market research for aerial robot kits to design and sell lightweight carbon fiber componanets and drivertrains for build your own quad/hex/octo copter sets...